James Madison was the fouth President.He was born March 16 1751 in Port Conway Virginia.He died June 28 1836 in Montpelier Virginia.
Madison allowed the country to get into unnecessary war but made peace as quickly as possible.
At the end of his second term Madison was glad to retire and go back to his home in Virginia. He had done his best as President. But his greatest achievement was Masterminding the writing of the Constitution.
Madison's easy election as president in 1808 continued the "Virginia dynasty," though fury over the embargo in New England lost Madison the electoral votes of that region. Madison also had to overcome opposition that favored his friend James MONROE, further foreshadowing political difficulties for his administration. The united devotion of the REPUBLICAN PARTY to Jefferson, the source of his ability to lead effectively without seeming to violate republican fidelity to legislative supremacy, dissolved under Madison's less charismatic management.
To placate opposition within his party, he appointed ill-qualified secretaries in the War and Navy departments, and a disloyal one in the State Department. Republican opposition in Congress, together with Federalist hostility centering in New England, again and again thwarted administration policies. Only Gallatin's skillful guardianship of the Treasury Department and Madison's own prestige as "father" of both the Constitution and the Republican party prevented total chaos.
This political weakness was especially debilitating and dangerous when Madison sought, following the failure of the embargo, to find other paths to peace with honor as the Napoleonic Wars reached their climax. Unfortunately the belligerents paid little heed to neutral rights or to commercial retaliation, nor did they see any need to respect a distant republic that was both disunited and virtually unarmed. Madison's devotion to republican doctrine prevented him from either grasping emergency powers or building a formidable army and navy in peacetime. Thus neither his diplomacy, lurching from one ineffective commercial policy to another for three years, nor his rhetoric deterred the escalating depredations of France and England.
His likeness is on the $5000 bill.